Gio van Bronckhorst admits he’s gutted to see Steven Gerrard lose his job at Aston Villa.
But the Rangers manager backed his predecessor to bounce back from the disappointment at being booted less than 12 months after controversially leaving the Light Blues for Villa Park. Van Bronckhorst has also been feeling the heat in recent weeks but the Dutchman is determined to win back the fans who vented their frustration after Wednesday night’s downbeat Premier Sports Cup win against Dundee.
And he’s convinced Gerrard can also respond to the disappointment of failure in the English Premier League. Van Bronckhorst admitted all gaffers are in the same boat and said: “First of all I feel for Steven personally. I’ve had regular contact with Steven since I joined here, talking about his time at Aston Villa and the games at Rangers. During the season whenever we won important games, he was always in contact. I watched his match the other night and I sent him a message this morning.
“As managers it’s not nice to see managers in these situations and then getting sacked. All we can do is have sympathy, it’s part of this job. All managers will face it at some time. It’s not what you want, because we’re all dedicated to bringing success to our clubs.
“But if it’s not going well you know the pressure is on you. For sure he’ll learn from his time at Villa – and his time at Rangers – to become a better manager in his next job.”
Van Bronckhorst has been taking flak from the Gers support and he warned his players they need to put on a show against Livingston today to ease some of the pressure. He said: “The message was clear after the game.
“We’ve won our last five domestic games, some of them convincingly and it’s positive to be in the semi-finals of the cup. I understood the frustration in the last 25 minutes the other night – because I was the same.
“At the big clubs the standards are really high. It’s about winning games, but you also need to entertain. You have to win in the right manner. That’s something we need to improve. The intensity needs to be there for 90 minutes.”
Van Bronckhorst revealed crocked Connor Goldson could be back sooner than expected as his injury list begins to clear ahead of a big week with Napoli in midweek. He said: “Ianis (Hagi) is in the final stretch and I’m hopeful after the World Cup break we will see Connor return. We are hopeful Glen Kamara will return for the match against Napoli.”
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